The present application is related to the fields of neurology and medicine and, more specifically, to identifying a specific region of the brain for therapeutic purpose (electrical simulation) in individuals with neurological disease, such as Parkinson's Disease.
In patients with neurological or psychiatric pathologies like, for example Parkinson's disease, nerve cell groups in circumscribed regions of the brain, for example the thalamus and the basal ganglia, are pathologically active, for example excessively synchronous. In these cases a large number of neurons synchronously generate action potentials. In healthy patients, the neurons in these regions of the brain fire qualitatively differently, for example, in an uncorrelated manner.
Recent studies suggest that beta (about 15-30 Hz) oscillatory activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is greatly increased in Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients and may interfere with movement execution (Cassidy et al., 2002; Levy et al., 2002; Kuhn et al., 2004; 2005; Williams et al., 2003; 2005). Dopaminergic medications decrease beta activity (Levy et al., 2002) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the STN may alleviate PD symptoms by disrupting this oscillatory activity. Depth recordings in PD patients have demonstrated beta oscillatory local field potential (LFP) activity in STN (Levy et al., 2002; Kuhn et al., 2005). Beta oscillatory LFP activity in the STN has been shown to be coherent with cortical EEG and contralateral EMG (Williams et al., 2002; Marsden et al., 2001).